XION pursues walletless and gasless blockchain adoption

0:00I'm Ashen Addison from the Cryptocoin Show and today on Blockchain Interviews, we have back with us Burnt Banksy from Zion. Uh, pleasure to have you back on the show. It's been about eight months since we last spoke and Zion is continuing to explode and I know there's institutional partnerships. You guys were just at Korea Blockchain Week. Uh, the the crypto market, Bitcoin itself

0:21also just about back at all-time highs. Uh, it's exciting time. Thank you so much for taking the time to come back. >> Yeah, Ashen, thanks for having me. It's always uh it's always good being on here. >> Definitely. I would love to start off with, you know, an update, but also just a high level on what you and the team have built over the years at Zion. Uh

0:40what makes it different, you know, the walletless blockchain technology and some of the adoption metrics so far and then we can dive into all the latest details. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um it's interesting that you say latest details. I mean, we've spent the last four years trying to make crypto disappear. Uh and then ultimately like answered the question or

0:56like got hit with the question of like well for what and we're like like you know outside of dexes outside of NFT marketplaces what is the use cases of crypto and uh you know we kind of fell into the answer there and you know the answer is proofs in the age of proofs and we'll get into that in a little bit but uh you know the idea of verification and verifying everything on the internet

1:18um that's kind of what we figured out. So you know in that time we worked with you know Uber uh you know Uber, Nike, Amazon about 130 web two brands uh and about hitting about a monthly sorry a million monthly active users and continuing to grow there. So things are getting really exciting and we're just in the beginning of that. >> Yeah. No, that's really exciting and

1:37it's great to see uh interest continued interest and growth from the traditional band brands that already have hundreds of millions of customers and and I think that's you know to get back to your point on like what's the point it's this proofs but also uh onboarding the the benefits and the advantages of blockchain technology you know instant settlement cheap fast transactions

2:00without having to understand what is a wallet and private keys all this stuff just throw it in the background let's just get the advantage antages and put it into the current system that we have that's outdated and slow. >> Yep. Yeah. Exactly. And uh you know, I think that the more you kind of look at what an L1 becomes, it's it's very similar to like just kind of putting all

2:17these pieces together, right? It's stable coins mixed with payments and remittance mixed with verification mixed with, you know, peerto-peer. And it's you look at one thing individually, it's kind of not much, but you get a 1 plus 1 equals 10 very, very quickly. >> Definitely. And you know, we're also in the age of uh not just the web two brands and looking at integrating

2:37blockchain, but artificial intelligence and now robotics and the machine economy and even humanoid robots, driverless cars. They're all going to have wallets or walletless technology that interacts with blockchain as well. I know Korea blockchain week, Zion was just there. There was a big focus on that blockchain, but also robotics and AI as well. Can you talk about uh Zion at the

3:00Korea blockchain week that just happened and you know what was that all about? >> Yeah, I mean we kind of understood pretty early on that some of our biggest users and I think the most users in kind of all of crypto in general exist in Korea. uh you know I was talking to uh you know someone in in kind of foreign policy there and very good discussion

3:19actually but you know effectively the the consensus is like you know he asked me what the perspective of Korea was from an outside you know from an American uh you know and it's like hey everyone wants to be on up bit right everyone wants to be on bit thumb you guys have the highest trading volumes but you also have um you know you also have some of the highest regulation and

3:37so it kind of acts as a stamp of approval and I think that you look at it's interesting stats because you have probably the highest penetration of users and most of the crypto users are like age 30 plus they're not >> you know 18 to 25 like you kind of see in America um and what's interesting it's it's mostly trading right like it is mostly speculative and when we were

3:56talking to this uh you know this policy maker uh you know the future of crypto really kind of comes in the in the software of things it comes in the verification it comes in you know being able to standardize everything uh and kind of come on to that next level of the playing field Yeah, it was so interesting. I saw uh one of the videos from the Korea blockchain week and you

4:17know it's funny you mentioned that with you know the age groups being a little different and how you know the adoption rate is just so high there. I saw like it was what you would see in like Vegas like a casino where you know young men were watching they were just watching trading leverage trading instead of sports. It's like competitive. They really are into it and you know crypto

4:37and blockchain just making it so much easier. >> Yeah, it's fun to watch too. I mean, I was part of a a training competition like a couple weeks back. Not the flex came in fifth, but you know. >> Yeah. Well, that's great that you know, Southeast Asia is just pushing so uh pushing us the industry forward and uh I think that when it comes to AI and robotics as well, Asia, I I feel like

5:02they're ahead of America, although America now in the last year and I'm curious if that's influenced Zion as well. uh being in America, you know, we're we're pushing to be the crypto capital of the world and the AI capital of the world, but I feel like Asia's they've been ahead for a while, even though they don't really talk about it in the news, but it's like robotics, AI,

5:22drones, automation, surveillance is is like further ahead on the other side of the world. >> Definitely. Definitely. It definitely definitely is. And I think that like, you know, where Zion kind of fits in there is this, you know, that the proliferation of AI is only going to continue. Uh, it's going to continue fast. And, you know, I actually just downloaded the Sora app. Uh, I don't

5:42know if you've played with it yet. It's a lot of fun. Um, you know, and it's it's kind of nice that you have this whole segment of an industry that's, hey, this is just AI videos. Um, because I think it's like that first time where you've ever really seen that. But I think that there's, you know, going to be a problem which is determining what is real and what is not on the internet.

5:59And I think that like with AI comes the investment of blockchain to kind of solve that and make sure that it's not monopolized by just a few players in the in the industry. >> Yeah. No, it's so true. I feel like there's going to be, you know, a lot of people are using AI for, you know, textbased communication, getting answers or, you know, writing a tweet or a blog

6:20for you quick, but we're soon going to be into all kinds of image creation and video. you can just make a a single sentence prompt and that'll turn into a full feature film and it'll be hard to know, you know, uh what's real or what's not and who who you put in the film. Do they have permission for that? >> Yeah, exactly. Are they making money off of it?

6:39>> Yeah, exactly. And blockchain is going to come into play there. Maybe you can talk about the age of proofs. Maybe just talk about the ages and how that is like the segments of Zion and then the age of proofs. >> Yeah, I think that is interesting. Like we kind of describe a lot of this as you know and I and I think like we put it out as a road map but realistically it's

6:58self cannibalization which for innovation you effectively need right so you had like the age of burning you know my name burnt banksy right there I lit a banky on fire sold it as an NFT and you know was one of the highest uh grossing gorilla marketing campaigns in all of crypto we broke the the NFT record you know and a lot of that was just kind of generating noise and generating like a

7:15northstar of like this is what we want right we want the digital and the physical to be one and the same uh you know then you kind of came the age abstraction which was this kind of roadblock effectively if you would right of saying well there's this gap now we need to cross this gap of you know usability and make sure that people can actually use this stuff and we need to

7:35abstract it away uh in order to uh actually have products that people want to use and now we're at that junction you know changing all the brand messaging effectively self cannibalizing ourel which is very very good and healthy for a tech brand of course but you know now of saying well what what do we want people to do like and the answer to that is we want people to build

7:56products that verify anything, right? Whether that be how many miles you've written on Lyft, whether that be how much money you have in your bank account or whether that be, you know, tickets to a concert that you're going to. You know, the physical and the digital world are two separate places right now. And in my mind, they will combine to one. And I think that AI proliferates this

8:17and blockchain makes it real. >> It's really cool. And you know, there's slight differences, but you could say there's pivoting and then there's adapting and self-cannibalizing. And sometimes the industry isn't ready for certain technologies yet. You know, before uh Bitcoin was institutionalized, you know, they weren't really ready for the underlying technology to come in.

8:38But now with the kinds of partnerships we're seeing, people saying, okay, you know, there there's Bitcoin, but there's also all of the blockchain technology that's underlying it and the other chains and has it's so much more than just a currency. Um then there's the physical proofs, but there's also digital like the AI as well. Where is that at with actually

9:00uh you know those partnerships that you're talking about and then proving things using the blockchain technology. Is that in play like right now? Like I could go onto my app and and prove and see like a blockchain time stamp of like this I can prove to people zero knowledge proofs that this information is correct. >> Yeah. I mean it's going to be easier

9:18than that, right? Like I was talking to one of one of the teammates today. Uh because I was making a pretty much a you know we were making an article of of what jargon effectively needs to be removed from crypto >> and I'm like you know what we got to do just Google one of those how to get started in web 3 things and then take all of that because it's completely

9:34unnecessary right and so it's like I'm not going to tell people to zero knowledge proof at this time stamp. But it's like we're working with Uber. we have signed contracts with Uber >> um you know effectively to prove out who are lift riders right and then prove that hey they've moved over to Uber riders and I'm not going to say you know prove it through your knowledge proof

9:53but it's like you know if you want to make a leaderboard of the Taylor Swift's top fans like that's something that you can prove and it's like these people don't know what most of these people don't know what zero knowledge proofs are and they shouldn't right like they just want to show that they're the biggest Taylor Swift fan in the world >> that's It's a great uh it's a great

10:12point because yeah, I think zero knowledge proof is is a big buzz word that we need to break down and that was the point of Zion earlier on is like we don't need a wallet. We don't need a wallet a wallet. We don't need all this stuff. Just like get it done, like get the advantages in. >> Yeah, just get it done. >> So yeah, I I'm glad you guys are doing

10:30that with these kind of web two companies. And I feel like uh it in some ways it's exciting to be able to prove things uh and like you can gamify it, you know, you can say like here's my I can actually prove that I did a thousand rides on on Lyft and like there's a leaderboard, you know, and like it's uh because a lot of that information it's just scattered everywhere out of

10:53everywhere and you don't even have access to your own information. >> Yeah. And you you look at this from like two two perspectives like you also can like look at this of like luxury versus discount, right? like I've done x amount of things so I get a 5% discount versus like we were talking to like a luxury ski brand and we were like well what if you know we had the people who you know

11:13Icon and epic passes for skiing it's like these are like a thousand one like one pieces uh and I was like what if like we just said hey you could only buy this stuff if you are you know you you've been to five different epic mountains in the last year >> and it's like even then like you're finding your real target customer uh you know or >> looking at airlines and saying you know

11:36airlines, casinos, hotels, anything with a loyalty program. >> Mhm. >> And like I don't really think we're at the point of being like you this should be on chain because they work. Like unless you give people a very valid reason as to why loyalty programs should be on on chain like you're going to spend >> $4 million like Starbucks and Polygon did and you're going to it's not going

11:55to work. uh you know but you can provide a matching option and say hey we know who your customers are. >> Yeah. No, I feel like the loyalty program integration of blockchain or even adding in tokens and coins and stuff that's been like a a fantasy that is easier fantasized about than actually done properly in a way that makes a better ROI for the company and for the

12:20people because we want to make it easier and cheaper, not spend a bunch of money to make it more complex. Yeah, exactly. And you just get more and more users that way, right? It's it's people don't pe VCs like complexity. I've noticed this quite a bit. VCs like feeling like they're much smarter. And so you got a lot of people who invest in projects that they don't actually really know a

12:40lot about because they want to seem like they know a lot about it and you kind of boil it down to the fundamentals and it's >> dog Uh for for lack of better words. uh you know, but you look at like kind of the retail mind and the retail mind doesn't have that. They don't want to be confused. They don't want to read through all this stuff. They want the

13:00benefit. They want it right then and there and that's it. Um and so it's like ends up being a better litmus test for actually launching products. >> Definitely. So with the PE like you guys have crazy like active users using the wallet technology and through the web two partnerships how do people like get started and maybe they even know that they're using Zion but do they usually

13:24are using some of the web two partners and then all of a sudden hey you have the verification through Zion or are they actually going to Zion and trying out different partners and things like that? I would say like I would say near token launch it was like that right it was like oh let's go and let's explore Zion um but that was like it was like token launch the main you know the main

13:43audience was crypto people um you know and it's still there like there is an ecosystem exploration and like we do still want an ecosystem exploration but you know what one person's ecosystem explan exploration is is another person's app store and you know I think that there's going to be a you know so so the answer right now is >> we kind of still have both uh A lot of

14:04people and like we noticed this have been I would say within the last two months mostly have been going externally through projects because more high quality projects are actually launching. Um and but I think what that will turn into is an app store. It's just there's not enough apps that are genuinely quality. But I would say that for the entire industry, like my biggest pet peeve is

14:28going to like an app store and it like bringing you to a validator's website in this industry. It's so annoying. >> Definitely. I feel like there's always been uh a hope for a DAP store of like where's all the blockchain apps? >> No. Yeah, even apps that have some remote connection of uh you know verification or proofs through through Zion or through blockchain. And yeah,

14:54it's like what can we do to get more web two companies? You guys are partnering with a lot of them, but how can we get that onboarding exponentially growing so there's more companies and everyone makes it you're trying to make it as easy as possible to eliminate the crypto part? How can we accelerate that so that more companies are using proofs and and

15:12blockchain on the on the back end? >> Yeah. I and I think like there's two different routes to that, right? Like there's and this is kind of how the team is I'm noticing breaking out now. It's like there's this enterprise side of the business which is this like >> prepackaged like here's here's the I just said the name of it. We haven't launched the name of the product yet. Um

15:31but here's this thing um you know that you can use and we can effectively verify everything and you bring that into like a B2B sales role and that's like we're talking to airlines, we're talking to casinos, we're talking to hotels and we have a product to sell. It's not a crypto product, it's a product to sell and then we still have this kind of ecosystem for startups,

15:50right? which is build new products with this new technology because we understand the disruptive nature of this. Some of it is like a cost-saving mechanism where it's like you know big companies should be using this stuff because it either saves them money or it reduces fraud but also you can build new industries on it. So it's you know what we've grown the team probably like 10

16:11people in the last two months just under this recognization of like wow this actually needs to scale a lot more if we want to do the things that we want to do. >> Yeah. Wow that's really exciting. >> Yeah. um does does you know I I feel like there's still there there's a lot of institutions and enterprises that are getting interested in in Bitcoin maybe for the financial

16:30aspect of it but the actual introduction of the blockchain technology there's not it's not always black and white on like okay this is has a clear ROI because it costs some money up front maybe a little bit to integrate it >> is there still that >> how has that changed over since we last spoke and since the new administration in the US is being more pro- crypto and

16:50hopefully more probchain of the technology. Are there are you seeing an acceleration of these web 2 companies since the beginning of this year of interest in the technology side of it? >> Yeah, but not in a good way. Uh, hilariously like yes and no. I will say like I think that in the same way that people were like really interested in NFTs, I think it's very similar to that

17:12which makes it feel like a fad. And I think >> instead of NFTs, it's stable coins. And I think everyone's going to have their own stable coin, right? because of the genius. Everyone's going to have their own stable coin and then you know you're probably going to have whitelisted or it's going to consolidate down to a few and it's like why did we have this

17:26stable coin and >> I I I think that's kind of what I'm seeing and it's like it's good. I'm pretty happy that it's that it's being accepted but on that like counter point it's like great what happens in four years because I've seen this story before. >> Definitely. Yeah. with uh you know I know the the launch of the USA Tether uh now trying I think that's in leading up

17:50to the genius act here and circle we have two sort of leading competitors but I don't want to see more stable coins cuz it's like it's just more there already is a lot of fraction yeah fragmentation like low liquidity many chains we just need to unify everybody uh on the financial side to be like okay let's all agree to use some things that work well with each other Otherwise,

18:13we're going to be cannibalizing each other in a bad way. >> Yep. Yeah. Exactly. And it's like Sorry, >> no, I I just I'm curious on uh on the Zion side, you know, there's there's these proofs, but and we're talking about stable coins. I feel like eventually these companies are are going to want to if if it saves them money, which it definitely can with stable

18:35coins if the if the ramps are done right. Is that something that Zion has a play in as well with these web two companies? >> Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it depends, right? Like it it depends geographically, right? Like if you want to do US, the rails are pretty much there. You just, >> you know, people don't really want a KYC. like it's just a a friction point,

18:57right? So, it's like it's up to the extent of like imagine going to like the thing is like I can go to I don't know I can go to Google and I can get the new Google phone, but you know how annoying it would be to have to buy like Google bucks and then buy the Google phone with Google bucks. >> Um >> it's it's this friction that like I don't think that they want because why

19:18would they? But it's like realistically what I think is that it's it's what's going to happen is you're going to have like cash on hand. Uh right. So it's like cash on hand, stable coins yield bearing, right? So it's like let's have people give us money in the form of minting stable coins and then let's use that capital, buy treasuries, and then get some rate off of that. Um, and I

19:39think that's fine, but it kind of and yeah, it exists so long as rates are pretty high right now, but >> at a certain point like that I feel like what's going to happen is you're going to get people racing for high stable coin yield and like that's going to be how you're going to get a lot of money and then you're going to have another tariff situation and then

19:58>> yeah, >> it's going to be the same over again. Like I've been in this industry for long enough to see more stable coins die than like I've seen more I don't know for some reason I feel I've I've seen more stable coins die than being born which doesn't feel correct. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, it's don't create more stable coins and there's also the nature

20:17of buoyancy coins or finding other ways to sort of fight the inflation which just make it complex and algorithms that probably aren't going to work in the long run. >> That aren't going to work. like we've we've tried we've done we've done the kick flips of arithmetic here. It's it it doesn't work. Um >> yeah and well with Bitcoin getting a lot of institutional adoption in the last

20:39couple years here and now they're starting to move into Ethereum and Salana uh those those return hungry institutions but with Bitcoin they're also looking at yield as well. But uh there is institutional interest uh in blockchain from some I know that Zion just partnered with Fireblocks which is one of the major players in institutional uh coordination and there

21:02is a merging of of tradi with with crypto uh and it's slowly happening now that Bitcoin is sort of becoming a hopefully is sort of a household name uh as you know the most successful ETF of all time so far. people are like, "Hey, maybe we should start integrating the technology into institutions and stock markets." Um, with that integration with Fireblocks, that opens the door for so

21:26many more institutions. Um, how are you guys going to be working with more institutions to hopefully get this, you know, from a B2B level and then that can help spread the blockchain into millions of people. >> Yeah. Um, you know, I mean, I think it's it's always a part of like working with institutions, we want to be as secure as possible, right? And like I think that

21:47there's always we're very very far in front of everything on a ledger anymore. Uh you know it is >> you know very very you know I think we did we have Hex Trust now Fireblocks and then Anchorage as well. And it's so it's kind of like this this you know Thanos glove every everyone. Um but you know Anchorage is trusted by some of the highest uh you know most trusted

22:07institutions and really just acts as a signal which is what we're extremely excited about. Now we can just welcome more institutions, welcome more uh kind of bigname clients in which, you know, for us it's it's it's awesome. Like that's no longer a roadblock. >> Yeah, definitely bring them in. >> Bring them in. >> Yeah, they're we're we're still early,

22:26you know, um especially since uh the tokenization of financial instruments in the stock market really hasn't even started yet. Um but it's coming. Um so it's exciting. Um, and you know, I was looking at the uh we do we dove into the age of proofs. I know that there's a bunch of quarter quarters on the road map and there's other ages and part of that is the age of unicorns which sounds

22:49exciting. Uh, you know, I'm always looking at investing in the next unicorn. Um, can you talk about sort of the road map and looking ahead and beyond age of proofs as well? >> Yeah, I mean it's right now a lot of this is is we're doing this ourselves, right? like we're having the the sales conversations, but I think a lot of it was like what I was talking about with

23:06the ecosystem like we have earnos being probably the main use case of this new uh this new product that we're launching. Um you know and they are revolutionizing marketing. The next is you know we're focused on marketing, we're focused on social media, we're focused on dating and I think these are the next three huge things to be really revolutionized. But in order to really

23:25kind of build this new version of the internet up, we need to be every industry. And so being this kind of unicorn of unicorns and making sure that like the people who want to disrupt the next Steve Jobs, the next Bill Gates can exist, you know, that's what we're looking for. And just finding more and hypers scaling that out uh is is what that next era looks like. But you know,

23:45you got to start once replicate that and then double it every time. >> Definitely. Can you talk more about that earn OS? Is that a way that people can get involved and and earn? Uh yeah, I mean that's uh ENOS is a very interesting that that's kind of like how we were talking about Uber and you know Amazon it's it's the most efficient marketing platform that exists. I think

24:07they have an 80% deduction in customer acquisition cost. Um you know it's super super super exciting. >> That's awesome. And you mentioned dating there that that's something that you know the financial industry is not uh talking about as much but it's a huge industry and I know like the the dating app CEOs have have made billions um and you know it's uh every TV show of for

24:32your for your common people that's what it's all about. How how can we integrate blockchain into that to you know really bring more people in? It is. I mean, it's it's verification, right? Like there's such an issue on >> there's such an issue on like you don't know who you're meeting up with and like an element of safety there, you know, and you can have as much fun as you want

24:56with it. Like, you know, we has one project building on us called Sugar Daddy, which you could only be on if you have over a million dollars in your bank account. That's awesome. Uh, you know, but also it's like and it kind of like, you know, it kind of lends itself to like recruitment, etc., But it's like prove that you went to this university, prove that you went, you know, worked at

25:12this job, you know, hell, you could even prove how much money you make if you really wanted to. Uh, you know, and it's up to pretty much everything. >> Yeah. No, that's a great point. And yeah, it can not just for for for Yeah. the uh proving your profile. Hopefully, it doesn't get too nerdy on the on the app, but um for safety and like catfishing and uh guys pretending to be

25:34women that end up scamming people with crypto and things like that. I know it's a We should get that guy actually. We should get the Tinder Swindler. It's actually a really good idea. We should absolutely get this guy to promote it. >> Definitely. Yeah. No, it's it's a huge thing. Uh I'm glad blockchain can help in these industries where you you wouldn't think of it at first, but but

25:53then you realize that it makes perfect sense. >> Nice. Cool. >> Awesome. >> Yeah. Well, what's the best way for people to, you know, that are interested in like checking out uh the the ecosystem more, getting involved and also following along with these updates as more institutions come in, as more apps, you know, where the the blockchain fanatics at least, how can I start

26:13proofing things and putting it on the blockchain? >> We are uh yeah, I mean, definitely I would say stay stay tuned for the you know, we we've been doing everything on NOS test. I think they've had like 2 million users or maineta I should say. Um and you know, real money of course. Um, but now I think later this month, >> I think we should say that. Um, maybe,

26:33um, whatever. Um, I'll get you that. It's fine. Uh, you know, definitely check it out. There's going to be a lot of projects launching, but a lot of this will be the base of, uh, you know, Burn Zion. So, check out Burn Zion. Follow us on Twitter. Uh, you know, and everything will kind of stem from there. >> Awesome. Bangsy, thank you so much, man. Uh all the best in uh proofing

26:54everything in the world and putting on the blockchain and leading us into the age of unicorns. I'm ready. Um and yeah, getting all these web two companies and institutions involved uh with the greatest technology that we have right now. All the best with everything moving forward and uh thanks for coming on again and would love to have you back in the near future.

27:12>> Thanks for having me.